EVE – PI Wrapup

So it seems that by actually extracting resources in hi-sec, I’ve been doing it wrong (as poster Chris said in a reply to my previous PI entry). What I should have done is not extract anything, and just buy stuff off market to reprocess to a higher tier. It also would have been excruciatingly slow going, starting with 6 million ISK and being an hour round trip from market, but I suppose had I stuck it out that would have been the better choice.

After fiddling with my spreadsheet, I estimate that I could make about 100K profit for each Nano-Factory and Sterile Conduit. (Organic Mortar Applicators do not appear profitable with current pricing). If I had enough materials to run the factories at max capacity, that means 5 million ISK profit/day. And in turns that means ~150 million ISK profit/month.

This sounds a lot better! Only a few logistics problems are in the way: ISK needed to buy quantities of commodities, time needed to haul back/forth. However, the largest issue is that I let my subscription lapse a few days before Chris’ post. So, no rebuilding PI infrastructure, no moving to new planets, no buying and hauling goods to market, etc. I’m done with EVE for a while.

Sorry, but the amount of time spent grinding ISK in order to do other stuff is too high for me. No-extraction PI looks great now, but I’m still weeks away from earning a reasonable income (say, 20 million ISK/week) for the amount of time I have and want to spend doing it. A back of the envelope calculation tells me that it would take another 6 weeks, which is very optimistic because it assumes I have enough ISK to simply rebuild all new PI infrastructure (plus have maxed out command centers to power as many processing buildings as possible) and purchase a maximum amount of commodities to immediately start cranking on.

My gaming time is usually 2-3 chunks of time per week, in ~3 hours blocks, and I’m not finding that to be conducive to newbies starting out and finding a way to make a sustainable income (with my further requirement that said income is fun for me to do, ruling out trading and mining, both of which I find to be deathly boring). I can’t log in every day to check market prices and optimize what I produce. I mean jeez, doing that starts to feel like an actual second job running a small restaurant or something. Um… no, I meant to play a game for fun, I don’t want to lose sight of my relaxation and downtime.

So, I’m done with EVE for now. I’m going to dabble in some other MMOs, and re-pick up some I’ve wandered away from. EVE is too demanding for me to get anywhere in with the time I have, which is fine, I’m sure New Eden will do great without me.

EVE – PI week 2

Here are results (in a shorter summary format) for week 2 of my Planetary Interaction results. The difference between this week and last week, as far as moving resources back and forth, was that I purchased various amounts of refined commodities before heading out. My planets don’t produce refined commodities in the same quantities, so I bought more of the least produced items, in order to make an extra advanced commodity or two.

Basically, I evened out the quantities by buying an extra amount of the low 2 PI-produced commodities, to equal the amount of the 2nd highest. I couldn’t afford to buy up the low 3 to equal to top amount. For example, looking at last week’s numbers, Chalice would have bought 60 polytextiles and 40 synthetic oil, so that she had 170 of polytextiles, synthetic oil, and fertilizer. There would be leftover superconductors, which eventually could be also sold off. But I didn’t sell the extra this time, in order to track what just producing the advanced commodities earns.

Profit Summary

In 1000′s of ISK:

• Chalice – 2586
• Sunbeam – 1408
• Halcyon – 1366
• Total: 5360

Conclusion

Income is a little better, but still dismal at a little over 5 million ISK per week. I was hoping for an income more like 10 to 15 million ISK per week, doing PI once a week, but maybe that’s too much to hope for. Unfortunately, I fall short by over 50%. I’m sure it is the combo of “high-sec” and “once a week” (for 2.5 hours), but that’s all the time I’m willing to spend basically farming ISK to support doing fun stuff.

I’m following with great interest, Mabrick’s challenge, taken up by Grimmash. I can’t replicate Mabrick’s numbers, heck I can’t even get 10% of those numbers (although I am not making NRP; maybe the markup on that is enormous). Even the modified profits from Kao Jai are nearly orders of magnitude larger than my results. Is that really high-sec and 30 minutes a day?! If that were true, wouldn’t everybody be PLEXing their accounts effortlessly from hi-sec profits? I can’t believe CCP wouldn’t nerf that.

It could be shifting to NRP is the way to go, but that would require rebuilding most of my PI infrastructure, selecting new planets, and grinding more ISK to build it again. I’m just not up for that. I have a good overall feeling from these past weeks of commodity production, and with the time I spend on the planets I have access to, there is no way I’d make 100 million ISK in a month – I’d be a high risk loan from Mabrick’s corporation’s point of view; a “non conforming loan” in mortgage parlance. So I’m not going to go that route.

However, I have figured out what I’ll do going forward, and I’ll get to that later.

EVE – PI week 1

Here is how week 1 of Planetary Interaction went, using a 6 day 22 hour extraction cycle. Now that I’m done building out the infrastructure, I can collect profit.

Note that the Advanced Commodities produced were actually using last week’s materials, so this first week might be a little off, but that should even out. Also, I’m rounding ISK amounts to the thousands. Furthermore, I’m accounting for export/import taxes by just recording ISK after I’m done at the market. I’m too lazy to split out the various fees involved.

Chalice

My first/main character is running colonies on 5 planets and producing Nano-Factories. That involves 4 Refined Commodities and the finished product.

• Nano-Factory: 4
• Fertilizer: 170
• Polytextiles: 110
• Superconductors: 205
• Synthetic Oil: 130

I exported and hauled the 4 Refined Commodities to the first planet, dropped them off, picked up the Nano-Factories, and hauled to Dodixie to sell. While traveling to Dodixie, I reset a 6 day 22 hour production cycle.

• Start ISK (000′s): 2610
• End ISK (000′s): 4054
• Profit (000′s): 1444
• Time spent: 0:27

Sunbeam

An alt is producing Organic Mortar Applicators using 5 planets.

• Organic Mortar Applicators: 2
• Mechanical Parts: 175
• Consumer Electronics: 160
• Coolant: 170
• Oxides: 125

Did the same pick-up, drop-off, and hauling to market to sell.

• Start ISK (000′s): 3911
• End ISK (000′s): 4122
• Profit (000′s): 211
• Time spent: 1:02

Halcyon

An alt is producing Sterile Conduits using 5 planets.

• Sterile Conduits: 2
• Miniature Electronics: 80
• Construction Blocks: 185
• Livestock: 170
• Viral Agents: 200

Did the same pick-up, drop-off, and hauling to market to sell.

• Start ISK (000′s): 2147
• End ISK (000′s): 2649
• Profit (000′s): 502
• Time spent: 1:06

Totals

• Profit (000′s): 2157
• Time spent: 2:35

Unfortunately, the profit numbers are completely dismal. Another surprising thing was the time it took; the bulk of which was travel to/from Dodixie. So, I did the typical thing when faced with travel, killing time by doing household chores and/or watching TV (thank goodness for TV via Netflix DVDs and the ability to pause at will) or reading on another computer. At this rate, it would take 23.2 weeks to accumulate 50 million ISK to buy a NRP blueprint, or 4.6 weeks to accumulate 10 million ISK for a Vexor cruiser (and of course, I’d really want several times more to account for loss).

That’s terrible – these expenses are just roundoff for established players, but large obstacles for me.

I made far more than ~2 million ISK/week while building out my planetary interaction infrastructure. I suspect the difference is the 7 day draw cycle versus the 1/2 day cycles I used previously. I’ll see what next week’s numbers are, but it looks like a weekly PI cycle won’t be enough income to be useful.

Another possibility is that manufacturing Advanced Commodities isn’t worth it, due to the export/import taxes moving Refined Commodities to the factory planet, and the export taxes on the resulting Advanced Commodities.

Observations

Production is throttled by the least-produced commodity. I could try boosting production (e.g by upgrading command centers, supplying more power for more extractor head units), or buying extra commodities to make up for the deficient ones. Both strategies require more ISK which in turn would require more time-intensive PI fiddling, but that’s just not going to happen.

I might try a week of just selling the Refined/Specialized Commodities, instead of processing them all the way to Advanced. I hope that works out better, because if it takes several weeks to earn the amount for an inexpensive decent ship, I have some thinking to do about playing.

EVE – PI update

I haven’t written much about EVE lately, because I haven’t been doing anything other than setting up colonies/factories on planets. I’m finally closing in on having 3 characters producing Advanced Commodities (Nano-Factory, Organic Mortar Applicators, Sterile Conduits).

It has been a slow process, because I bootstrapped all of it from ~8 million ISK. 2 million of that went into buying the skillbooks for my first character, and 4 million went into developing the first colony. From there, I reinvested the profits into more colonies, skillbooks, and PI expansion for my 2 alts. Soon, around 6 weeks after I started, I can just accumulate the profits for a while.

Others also recommend Planetary Interaction – Mabrick has a nice write up. The catch with his setup is that you need more seed money to start, around 80 million ISK (!!). I had 10% of that, earned from the newbie missions plus the intro storyline arc, The Blood-stained Stars. EVE is like the real world – if you have a nice chunk of money, you’ll have an easier time making more. Mabrick does offer a solution for this – a generous loan program. Check it out!

Mabrick suggests making Nanite Repair Paste. I looked into doing that, but there were two obstacles I couldn’t overcome: 1) 50 million ISK for the blueprint, and 2) needs 6 planets (level 5 Interplanetary Consolidation – about 3 weeks to train after level 4). Maybe I’ll come back to NRP after building up the ISK and taking the extra training hit, and of course crunching the numbers to see how profitable my setup is.

Sugar Kyle also writes about finances and newbie players, with some advice and the observation that “trickle income” might be enough.

As a newbie player myself, income or lack thereof, is something I’m keenly aware of. For all that various players talk about risk and fun outside of high-sec, the reality is that a player needs an ISK cushion large enough to absorb some losses. Whatever a player might want to do in game, they need a steady/reliable income source to fund it. As a newbie, this is difficult because you have almost nothing to fall back on, so the risk you can shoulder is minimal. There are profitable things to do, but I find two of them very boring (mining, trading).

I wouldn’t recommend what I’m doing – I can’t imagine spending 6 weeks to setup PI would have widespread appeal. To be totally honest, I recommend that newbies just buy a PLEX and sell it for the 500 million ISK or whatever current rates are. Doing this crossed my mind a lot, but I’m stubborn.

Someone that does go the PLEX route can take that pile of ISK and have some fun in game; the only requirement is for them to figure out an income stream before burning through it all. They could do fun stuff in the meantime. They’d get to see if they enjoy what they want to do versus flailing around trying to make ISK as their overriding concern. They might end up with nothing, but that can happen anyway. In that event, they are out the cost of 1 PLEX and can decide if continuing their subscription is worth it to them. May as well find out sooner rather than later.

Planetary Interaction Profits

I’ve shifted around my PI schedule a few times. I started with a 4 day/3 day cycle, so that I was fiddling with PI on the same two days a week. Then I tried a 23 hour cycle, but it was too much time for me. Then I tried a 2 day cycle. Now I’m migrating to a 7 day cycle (technically a 6 day 22 hour cycle), and this weekend will be a turning point – I’ve finally built out PI across 3 characters, and can accumulate profit rather than reinvest into expansion.

A ~7 day cycle won’t result in maximum production, but it fits my desired schedule better. I’ll track profits and report here.

Basically, I’m trying to avoid Jester’s Strangled in the Crib scenario, where I drift away from a combination of 2 things: lack of ISK, and lack of enjoyment earning the ISK.

Mac Gaming

My main computer has been a mid-2009 Mac Book Pro. It’s fine for most everything I do, except for a few games. Plants vs. Zombies is fine. Even Civilization 5 is tolerable. MMOs, not so much. It stutters playing the intro EVE video. It is far below the recommended minimum for LoTRO and GW2. For those games, and other Windows-only ones, I have another computer, an early-2010 Sager notebook, recently upgraded with an SSD and Windows 8. The Sager works well enough for me, except for graphics issues which I think might be related to overheating (which seems to manifest during GW2 quite a bit).

Anyway, I decided to treat myself to a computer upgrade, since my trusty MBP was approaching 4 years old. I bought a Mac Mini, upgraded with a fusion drive and to a core i7. And I added my own 16 GB since Apple charges way too much for memory.

As a result, I am now playing a few games on the Mac Mini instead of the Windows box. EVE Online is one, LoTRO another, GW2 yet another. I downloaded the League of Legends OSX, but have yet to make an account or play. I tried installing the DDO OSX client, but I can’t seem to get a non-corrupted copy. I also play other games on my Mac from time to time: FTL and Hoard – both of which run better on the Mac than Windows, but I suspect the Windows 8 issue is with mouse drivers. The Mac Mini also runs Space Chem just fine, as well as Borderlands 2, Torchlight and various other misc games.

Yes, I hear you Windows purists gnashing your teeth. The Intel HD4000 integrated graphics vs. a dedicated nVidia GeForce or AMD Radeon? Outrageous! Barbaric!! However, I think the games look just fine on the Mac Mini, especially since one of them (GW2) was nearly unplayable on my Windows notebook due to graphics driver resets (possible driver issue, possible overheating; ultimately I got tired of dealing with it). Some games, like bleeding edge first person shooters, undoubtedly won’t play as well too, but I play very few games of that genre.

I do notice some upgraded graphics. In EVE, I see lightning flashes on storm planets, gas clouds on gas planets, weather effect on temperate planets, etc. I never saw those on the Windows notebook, but it is a 3 year old machine with a GeForce GTX 285M, so perhaps it is also on the low side for modern games.

I uninstalled a few games from my Windows gamebox in order to make room for others, for example, The Secret World. I thought a 256 GB SSD would be roomy enough when I bought it, but we all know how this hobby eats disk space.

Of course, all is not perfect. For example, EVE Online… right now, the launcher doesn’t start the game. I click “play” and it just exits. *sigh*. I’ve tried various troubleshooting steps, but nothing has worked. I’m sure it will be sorted soon.

EVE – Producing Advanced Commodities

I mentioned earlier I was going to try Planetary Interaction as a way to generate an income stream. So far I’ve made about 20 million ISK, averaging 1.5 million ISK per day. It’s decent income for the time spent, with some potential for future growth. However, I’m not rolling in ISK just yet – my wallet is still very low – because I’ve been reinvesting profits into expansion.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share what I’m doing. This isn’t the best possible setup, for one thing I’m in high sec, but is a detailed example of how to go about producing 3 of the P4 (Advanced) commodities in a relatively non-time-intensive manner.

Quick Overview

There are many guides on Planetary Interaction – read and follow the links on EVE University’s page and go from there. As for specifics, that’s what my goal here is with this post.

Look over the excellent chart by Karoi Larok. In particular, note that 3 of the P4 (Advanced) commodities can be made with 5 planets. Technically everything can be made with 5 planets, drawing out resources and shipping them back and forth in a complicated manner… what I mean is that some of the P4 (Advanced) commodities can be made by creating a single P2 (Refined) commodity on 4 planets, and then shipping those goods to a 5th planet where “final” assembly occurs.

Those 3 Advanced commodities are: Nano Factory, Organic Mortar Applicators, and Sterile Conduits.

For example, the 4 P2 (Refined) commodities needed for a Nano Factory are:

• fertilizer
• polytextiles
• synthetic oil
• superconductors

Each P2 commodity can be made on a single planet:

• A) fertilizer – ocean or temperate
• B) polytextiles – temperate
• C) synthetic oil – gas or storm
• D) superconductors – storm

For example, on an ocean planet, one extractor processes complex organisms into protein, another extractor processes micro organisms into bacteria, and the protein and bacteria combine to produce fertilizer.

In this case, the 5th planet’s colony will extract and process base metals into reactive metals, combine the P2 (Refined) commodities from the other planets into industrial explosives and ukomi superconductors, and then produce a Nano Factory.

Starting out

You’ll need to purchase some Planetary Management skills:

• Remote Sensing
• Planetology
• Command Center Upgrades
• Interplanetary Consolidation

These 4 skillbooks will cost about 2 million ISK total. There is another skill, Advanced Planetology, but you don’t need that starting out.

You’ll also need to have enough ISK to build 1 command center, 2 extractor heads, 1 launchpad, 2 basic industry facilities, and 1 advanced industry facility, plus link them all together. In order to power everything, you’ll need a minimum command center 3 upgrade. My rule of thumb is it takes about 4 million ISK to start out on a planet.

The Planet Management skills don’t need to be maxed out, but as a minimum you’ll want to train a few levels of Planetology (so you can get a useful resource scan) and get Command Center Upgrades to 3 (so you can build a CC with enough power/cpu for the P2 commodity production). Each level of Interplanetary Consolidation lets you colonize an extra planet, so ultimately you’ll want that skill to be 4 (so you can build on 5 planets).

If you are literally brand new and have no/minimal ISK, do the tutorial missions and then as much of the newbie epic storyline The Blood-stained Stars that you can. That should easily net at least 6 million ISK or more. Even starting on a single planet will work – it just means you’ll be reinvesting profits into expansion for a while in order to really get going.

Colonizing

In order to make one of the P4 commodities I listed earlier, we’ll need to setup 4 P2 commodity planets, and then a P4 commodity production planet. Let’s use Nano Factories as the example: here we’ll want to find 4 planets: A) ocean or temperate, B) temperate, C) gas or storm, D) storm; and then later a 5th planet: E) barren.

The buildings needed for P2 commodity production are:

• 2 extractor control units (1,2)
• 2 basic industry facilities (3,4)
• 1 advanced industry facility (5)
• 1 launchpad (6)
• 1 command center (7)

P2 planet

Start on planet A: ocean or temperate. Scan the planet to get an idea of the resource distribution, then drop a command center (7). Upgrade the command center to at least level 3. Build an extractor control unit near complex organisms (1), build another extractor control until near micro organisms (2).

Then, build a launch pad (6) in between the two extractor control units (1,2). Build 2 basic industry facilities near the launchpad (3,4), then build an advanced industry facility nearby (5). I like to build the 2 basic facilities near each other on one side of the launchpad, and the advanced facility on the other side, so I can easily identify them by their position.

Now you’ll need to link everything together. Remember, the command center doesn’t need to be linked in (although if you do so it adds a bit of storage)! Link both extractor control units to the launchpad, link both basic industry facilities to the launchpad, and finally link the advanced facility to the launchpad. This way intermediate products flow through the launchpad on the way elsewhere for further processing, which makes the launchpad automatically buffer excess materials into its storage.

At this point you should still have some power leftover for extractor head units, even at a control center upgrade of 3.

Since we are specifically setting up planet A for a Nano Factory, we need to extracting complex organisms and micro organisms, producing proteins and bacteria, and then producing fertilizer.

Select the extractor control unit near the complex organisms (1), select the “complex organisms” box to tell it what to extract, and add extractor head units (one or two head units for right now, but see below under Extractor Head Units). Click install to start it working. Do the same for the extractor head unit near the micro organisms (2); except of course have it extract micro organisms.

Time to set the various schematics, which determine what inputs/outputs each facility produces. Select one basic industry facility (3), install the “proteins” schematic. Pick the other basic industry facility (4) and install the “bacteria” schematic.

Select the advanced industry facility (5) and install the “fertilizer” schematic.

Routing

At this point, you have configured the buildings and now need to route products. I like to start from the top and work down.

Select the advanced industry facility (5), and route its product – fertilizer – to the launchpad (6). The final product will accumulate in the launchpad, ready for you to export!

Select a basic industry facility (3,4), and route its product – protein or bacteria – to the advanced industry facility (5). As in, route straight to the advanced industry facility, don’t route to the launchpad and then route from the launchpad. By selecting the destination building, products will automatically flow through the launchpad (which marks the products are “transitioning” in its routing table). With the numbers from the diagram, route from 3 to 5, route from 4 to 5.

Finally, select an extractor control unit (1,2) and route the extracted product to the appropriate basic industry facility (3,4). If you pick the wrong one by mistake (i.e. try to route complex organisms to the basic industry facility that is producing bacteria and thus expects micro organisms) it won’t finalize the route. This portion of the setup can be lots of clicking because you can only route 3000 units at a time. So if you are extracting 13000 units of product, you’ll need to make 5 routes – 4 for the 12000 units and then 1 more route for the leftover 1000. With the numbers from the diagram, route from 1 to 3, route from 2 to 4.

Double check to make sure every product is sent along to the proper destination, by checking each building’s product and routing tab, and ensure nothing is listed as “unrouted”.

Extractor Head Units

Each Extractor Control Unit (1,2) can farm out up to 10 extractor head units. How many should you build?

That depends on how much power you have leftover, and the balance of the resources. In summary, the more upgraded your command center, the more leftover power you’ll have to put into extractor head units, which lets you better balance the resources.

What I do is try to get roughly the same P0 resources from the planet. Since resources are distributed differently, and you would be lucky indeed to find high concentrations of what you need nearby each other, you’ll likely wind up with a much better source of one resource compared to the other.

This is where you can even that out by building different numbers of extractor head units. I start with an extractor head unit or two on both extractor control units and see how many resources are extracted. I’ll build more on the lower side. If you can’t, it just means your production will be throttled by the scarcer resource, which isn’t a big deal. After building up a surplus of the other material, you can switch around extraction strategies.

Other P2 planets

The other 3 planets for a Nano Factory are setup in a similar fashion. So are the planets for Organic Mortar Applicators and Sterile Conduits.

Fifth Planet – Advanced Commodities

So that 5th planet for these 3 cases is the one that does final assembly of extracted resources and P2 (Refined) commodites, producing 2 P3 (Specialized) commodity intermediate products and a final P4 (Advanced) commodity.

That setup is:

• 1 extractor control unit (1)
• 1 basic industry facility (2)
• 2 advanced industry facilities (3,4)
• 1 high tech production plant (5)
• 1 launchpad (6)
• 1 command center (7)

P4 planet

The high tech production plant can only be built on a barren or temperate planet, but in this specific case, that’s fine since the Nano Factory requires some extra P1 resources which happen to come from a barren planet (base metals -> reactive metals).

Select the basic industry facility (2) and install the “reactive metal” schematic. Select one advanced industry facility (3) and install the “industrial explosives” schematic, select the other (4) and install the “ukomi superconductor” schematic. Select the high tech production plant (5) and install the “nano factory” schematic.

Create links between all the buildings (except the command center) to the launchpad (6).

Route the Nano Factory from the high tech production plant (5) to the launchpad (6). Route industrial explosives from one advanced industry facility to the high tech production plant (route 3 to 6), route ukomi superconductors from the other advanced industry facility to the high tech production plant (route 4 to 6). Route reactive metal from the basic industry facility (2) to the high tech production plant (5).

Build a few extractor head units and get them extracting base metals. Route from the extractor control unit (1) to the basic industry facility (2).

Wait a second… how do the advanced industry facilities (3,4) get their inputs?

That is where export/import and hauling come in. You’ll need to export the P2 commodities from those other 4 planets that are cranking them out, and import them to this planet. Once you do that, the P2 commodities will appear in the storage area of the launchpad on the planet, and you can route them. For this case, route fertilizer and polytextiles from the launchpad to the advanced industry facility producing industrial explosives (route 6 to 3), and route synthetic oil and superconductors to the advanced industry facility producing ukomi superconductors (route 6 to 4).

Ongoing Maintenance

If that last step on the 5th planet is too much, just export the P2 commodities and sell them.

What I do to keep the time spent doing this down is grab the P2 commodities once a week, import them to the P4 planet, and let it crank away. Then, reconfigure the extraction cycle on the planets and check in later.

I also set a 3 day and 4 day extraction cycle (technically I do 2 days 22 hours and 3 days 22 hours) for every extractor control unit. That way I’m fiddling with PI on Sundays and Wednesdays (for instance) and each extraction ends early so that the time doesn’t creep later and later.

After a worthwhile amount of whatever I want to sell is produced, I export, haul to a trading hub, and sell! So far this generates reasonable/decent income for the time spent. I find it more interesting than mining zzzzzz…. oops sorry I fell asleep for a bit there.

Future plans include expanding every command center to support more extractor head units, spreading out to alts and get them producing P4 commodities, and so on. I look forward to eventually letting the ISK pile up slowly, which will let me bear the risk of loss better.

EVE – Income Source

ISK is one main throttle on activity in EVE, and the other is time. ISK is needed to purchase skills, ships, modules, replace losses, among other things. By time I mean real time, ticking away second by second towards a skill.

I can’t do much about the time needed, other than make sure my skill queue always has something in it and be working towards a goal. As far as ISK, I don’t really have a good income source, so I’ve become preoccupied trying to figure one out.

Ideally, an income source will be fun, will not dominate my in-game time, allow flexible scheduling, and is low-risk (at least while starting out). The more I think about it, the more the answer is Planetary Interaction.

PI has several advantages. First, I do enjoy it. One of my favorite indie puzzlers is Space Chem, and I get a bit of that feeling making factories and producing stuff in EVE via PI. I haven’t done much besides produce P1 (processed materials), but I like it so far.

Second, it occurs in the background and the ongoing maintenance is reasonable. Set up the colonies, figure out what to extract and process, let it run, collect resources later. Unlike mining, or grinding missions, or even trading, the ongoing maintenance is low. That’s ideal because when I do get a block of time to play, I can do other things like missions or exploration. Say I do find some low level PvP – it may be fun but it also doesn’t earn any ISK, so time spent doing that takes away from other “active” sources of income (mining, trading, missions, etc). But not PI, it produces while doing other stuff!

Third, PI is a good balance between time spent, risk involved, and ISK earned. Especially the risk part, which is low for PI in high-sec. I’m sure planets are better in low sec or null sec, but I’m not in the position to go there.

Fourth, PI is alt friendly. It doesn’t take long to make an alt character viable for PI. I have two other character slots that aren’t doing anything at all, and worst case they could be generating P1 commodities after an initial investment.

My single colony is doing well – it has produced about 1 million ISK of toxic metals, a P1 (processed materials) resource. It hasn’t required too much upkeep, so I’m very interested in trying PI on more planets and producing higher level goods, P2 (refined commodities) and up.

Overall, Planetary Interaction is the most ideal form of income I’ve come across. I will be testing that over the upcoming weeks/months.

Therefore, I’m going to be running colonies/factories on planets, for the foreseeable future. Due to initial startup costs (skill books and buildings), I’ll be even poorer in the short to medium term, busy recouping the initial investment and plowing profits into PI on more planets, but over time that should turn around.

I’ll update with how it’s going every now and then, and get back into playing other MMOs in the meantime.

EVE – Newbie Thoughts

I enjoy reading other MMO blogs – especially ones focused on EVE. The game has a famously steep learning curve, and reading other adventures gives me ideas about what to aim for. Plus, I pick up tidbits of info even though I’m not really in a position to use them. Anyway, here are a few of my favorite EVE blogs, and some random thoughts about recent topics from those blogs.

EVE Blogs

One of my favorites is Tiger Ears, a blog by a wormhole explorer. I can’t follow all of what he’s up to, but Google helps make more sense of it. Someday I would like to be that handy exploring, scanning, and hopping about unseen due to cloaking.

Another interesting read is Low Sec Lifestyle, which covers a variety of topics. A recent post was on Exploration and some of the upcoming changes.

Jester’s Trek is also quite good, however as a new player, much of the topic matter is beyond me. For example, the FOTW (fit of the week) posts – I don’t have any of those ships or modules, but maybe later I can use the info.

Cheradenine Harper, at Diaries of a Space Noob, is interesting to follow as a new player too. I was especially curious how he earned ISK, and it appears he started out mining, at least for the first 60 days, then manufacturing, and now some planetary interaction.

Finally, Gevlon at Greedy Goblin, is the perspective of a dedicated trader. That sounds deathly boring to me (buy low sell high haul stuff from A to B) however Gevlon is apparently an EVE trillionaire, so it does work.

The Importance of ISK

I’ve tried exploration, and it was fun. It also took longer than expected and I lost a ship and some modules, so it was net negative ISK overall. So I read Sugar Kyle’s post with great interest. She noted that exploration favors Tech 3 Strategic Cruisers, which I find very dismaying because those cost ~255 million ISK, a very large amount to me.

Gevlon is on a crusade to kill ice-mining bots, since those reduce profits. Apparently ice mining is quite profitable, but is it too expensive for me to start. Plus, it is mining (yawn). Actually, the bare minimum ISK needed for ice mining is attainable, but I’d rather do something less dull for income. For example, Level 1 distribution missions even if I only earn ~300K ISK/hour.

The “Conflict of Self Interest” post on Jester’s Trek is a great read, especially the comments. It covers a bunch of issues, from ganking to how to encourage more PvP to other issues.

I can’t speak for other players, but I know that for me, I avoid PvP and low/null sec purely for economic reasons. Simply put, I don’t have enough ISK to afford replacing ships, nor do I have the income stream. Plus, EVE PvP can be wildly asymmetrical. For example, I was ganked in low-sec by a Tengu, a Tech 3 Strategic Cruiser. It was a volley of 4 missiles, each of which cost more than the ship I was piloting! There’s no defending against that, it isn’t an equitable (trying to avoid using “fair” so I don’t imply that using an advantage is bad) fight. EVE vets might be proud that PvP is non-consensual, but that also implies equitable battles are voluntary. I’m going to guess without any proof that the typical PvPer doesn’t first scale their ship down to match a weaker unsuspecting victim.

I’m not sore about the gank, I know low-sec is risky. However, as a result of this and my low ISK wallet, my behavior has changed – I don’t go into low-sec anymore; I can’t afford the losses right now.

Newer players are at an enormous disadvantage in PvP. It isn’t possible to bridge it, except through time and ISK, and perhaps extra help (corporation members). It is like a boat race where once side gets to use a yacht and one side gets to use a rowboat. Except the rowboat owner has to buy another one after each loss, because the rowboat is destroyed. In that situation, if all I have is a rowboat and can’t afford too many replacements, I’m going to avoid racing altogether until I can at least afford my own yacht(s).

That’s what I do – avoid PvP as much as possible – right now.

In an earlier post, Jester asserts:

The simple fact is that every single EVE player in the game is impacted by how easy or complicated the POS system is. If you’ve ever bought a T2 ship or module, ever flown or been supported by a super-capital ship, ever hidden in a POS shield from your enemies, ever mined in a system with no station using a POS as your storage location, or ever been a part of a null-sec alliance, you are impacted by the POS system. That, as far as I can tell, is everyone.

I’m special! Apparently I am not at all currently affected by the POS (player owned starbase) system, because I am not in any of those categories. I have no T2 ships – my fanciest ship is a T1 Destroyer, the Catalyst; I have not flown or supported a super-capital ship – I’m certain I’ve never seen one; I have not hidden in a POS shield – I’m certain I’ve never seen one; I have never mined in a POS-only system – all my mining has been strictly for high-sec missions; I’m not part of a null-sec alliance or any-sec alliance for that matter – I am in the NPC corporation each character starts in.

I have been blind-invited to join a few corporations, but I decline because I play too inconsistently and too-few weekly hours to be a good corporation member. If Syncaine is representative of what an average corp wants as far as weekly availability, let’s just say I’m going to be a soloer.

Conclusion

One of the ways EVE is unique is that losses suffered are actual ISK lost. That last part is a major impediment to me doing much in game (right now)… I don’t have much of a rainy-day fund to replace losses.

It’s kind of like being in a casino with a $10 bankroll – I’ll have to stay at the $1 tables. I can see others at the $100 tables, and they are eating better food, have more choices of table games to play, and sometimes they even point out how much more fun they are having and probably think I’m nuts for staying at the $1 table. But the thing is, they are all millionaires and maybe don’t relate that well to people who have a smaller checkbook.

Anyway, to make up for some terrible analogies involving boat races and casinos , the next post will be on what I think will be my best income source.

EVE – Dabbling into Planterary Interaction

I finally got around to trying out Planetary Interaction. I watched the video CCP made, a really good video from EVE University, and still had some questions. Like many things in EVE, after learning enough to not feel totally lost, it is best to plunge in and try it, rather than suffer “analysis paralysis”. Besides, in high-sec space I’m really just risking a bit of ISK for building, not expensive ships and modules.

So I built a colony, muddling through the various options, building, routing, etc. My setup is below. It is terrible, as far as building placement, distance to resources, etc. I know that now, and am already figuring out how to do better!

Alpha Colony

The initial attempt was on the closest planet I could find, an ice planet. I built my Command Center in between two resources, thinking I’d harvest both. That was a mistake because building a route (pipeline) was too expensive. As a result, the single resource I could then harvest was comparatively far away. Oh well, chalk this up to figuring things out.

I built the Extractor Control Unit on the edge of the resource, which was heavy metals. Then I built and positioned 4 Extractor Head Units, fiddled with the program and installed it.

For some reason I can’t explain, I then build the Basic Industrial Facility far away as well, on the other side (route-wise) of the CC, which let me use the CC to buffer resources. I set the BIF to produce toxic metals from the heavy metals input, and route the result to the CC for storage. My little colony was off and running!

Despite being a terrible layout, my colony produced just under 2000 m^3 of toxic metals. Light searching on the market tells me these will sell for about 650K ISK. Not that much by other standards, especially considering I had to upgrade my CC to handle the power requirements due to bad layout (so the initial run basically payed for the buildings and upgrades, with a minor loss) but over time I can see a small profit. Besides, it was kinda fun doing this.

My PI skills are low so I’ve switched over and am training those up. While that is happening, I figured I could get another run out of my ice colony. So I built more EHUs for attempt 2, set the routing, and kicked it off.

Beta Colony

I’ll check in every day to launch/pickup the product (toxic metals) and sometime soon I will search for other planets and try something more elaborate. However, I’ll probably produce and sell toxic metals for a while in order to build up more of an ISK buffer.

I’m hoping that once I get squared away with a reasonable planetary factory going, I can slowly build up ISK for doing other fun stuff like buying ships, skills, modules, etc. All this stuff is expensive (to me), for example I’d like a bigger ship like the Vexor cruiser, but that’s 10 million ISK. A tech 2 exploration frigate, such as the Helios, is 20 million. Then I need skill books (cloaking), modules (cloaking), and be able to suffer some losses along the way. Even if I could afford a 10 million ISK ship, it would be stupid to buy one if a purchase like that wiped out my wallet. I really need more like 4 or 5 times as much as the total cost of the items (i.e. if I want to buy a cruiser plus skills/modules, it isn’t really 12 to 15 million I need, it is more like 50 to 75 million ISK. That way I can take a loss or three without bankruptcy).

Heck, just getting the items together so I can mine ice costs ~12 million ISK at the low end and 200 million on the high end.

It’s just expensive to do stuff in EVE!

EVE – Skill Training

I got busy and wasn’t able to play EVE too much lately.

What I made sure to do, was to keep my skill queue chugging along. I decided I’m best off training new skills to level 2 or maybe 3 depending, and then getting key ones to 4 and a select few up to 5.

Navigation to 5 was one, since that speed bonus applies to all ships and the skill is a X1 multiplier. I’ll train Mechanics to 5 as well, because that boost a ship’s structure hit points. I’ll probably train Engineering to 5, for the extra power grid output.

My plan is to get all the Engineering skills to Level 4. They all have to do with capacitor usage and energy, and I hit limits quite a bit. So a few percentage here and there will help, even if it isn’t hugely obvious.

Then I’d like to get the other Navigation skills to Level 4.

I was going to train my Gunnery skills more, but I’d like longer range weapons. My Small Hybrid Turret’s optimal range is 10 km, with a falloff at 18 km. Even maxing out Sharpshooter won’t increase the range that much. I’m thinking of going into Missiles instead.

What I’ll probably do is train up the various Drone skills to Level 4, since I’m Gallente after all. Maybe after that I’ll decide on Missiles vs Turrets.